


Nameless

by atropabelladonna1120



Category: Sherlock (TV), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: AU, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:58:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atropabelladonna1120/pseuds/atropabelladonna1120
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lives alone in a quiet mountain town in Italy, keeping to himself, trying to find peace. But his trade makes peace elusive -- and when he gets the call to eliminate Sherlock Holmes, it becomes downright impossible. They call him "The Professor" in the small town where he has found temporary refuge -- but his real name is Peter Guillam, and he is one of the world's deadliest assassins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Il Professore

 

Every other day or so, he buys a loaf of bread from the bakery around the corner: usually a _ciabatta integrale_ , whole wheat flour, crisp crust with a light, porous interior. Sometimes with olive oil and rosemary, more often plain; he likes it lightly toasted for breakfast, with salted butter, along with a cup of tea or a home-brewed _espresso_. Sometimes he has it for dinner too, sliced tomatoes and some excellent _caciocavallo,_ or that delicious home-smoked _prosciutto_ from the farmer who comes to the open-air market on Sundays. 

The bakery owner’s daughter -- sixteen, thick hair, dark eyes, firm, ample breasts -- always drops everything she’s doing to attend to him. She makes an elaborate show of bagging the bread and handing it to him, then takes an inordinate amount of time counting out his change, all the while eyeing him furtively from behind the cash register. Lately she’s taken to not wearing a bra, hard nipples poking through the thin material of the low-cut blouses she wears.

The _nonna_ , who’s often seated in a corner muttering to herself, always shoots him a stern look, _I see what you’re doing, you demon Englishman, you’re going to seduce the child and knock her up, leave her and break her heart_. He always gives her a polite nod, but she only glares harder, _I’m watching you, if you’re not careful I’ll put a curse on you and all the generations that come after you._

So these last few weeks he’s taken to handing the girl the exact amount for the bread, just so he can save a few minutes and duck out of the bakery as soon as he can, escape her juvenile attempts at seduction and her _nonna’s_ death stare. He’s rewarded with a pout every single time, and a very audible stamping of feet as she goes to ring up his purchase, opens and shuts the cash register drawer with a clatter and a bang. He’s already through the door when she calls out _grazie, signore_ grudgingly _, come back, why don’t you stay and talk to me?_

He strolls at a leisurely pace in the sunshine, the wrapped bread tucked under one arm. He buys a paper, nearly always Italian, only occasionally English -- usually after a job. On bakery days, he will sit in the shade outside Brunetti’s for a mean _espresso doppio_ served by an even meaner Signore Brunetti, 81 years old, brown as a nut and wrinkled as a prune, with a foul word to spare for everyone who crosses his path. Once he’d made the mistake of sitting at a table that hadn’t been cleared yet, and Signore Brunetti gestured rudely with his hands, _che coglione_ , removing the used coffee cups with a clatter. There are other cafes, but he likes Brunetti’s precisely because of Signore Brunetti, more insolently, robustly alive in his tiny old man’s body than any dozen young people he might pass on a city street on any given day.

Also, for the price of a coffee, he can sit in his spot all day and watch the world go by.

Except he really doesn’t.

What he _really_ does, is watch the world. Simply watch it, closely and carefully. Look out for any little change, any sign of something out of the ordinary. A new face, a new car driving past the _piazza_. A repair van idling outside a shop it has no business idling outside of. People who don’t dress like they are from these parts, people who dress _too much_ like they are from these parts, people conversing in perfect Italian with an accent that tells him they aren’t Italians. Something in their hair or their manner or their sunglasses or their shoes that doesn’t quite feel right, doesn’t quite ring true.

So far, there hasn’t been anything. He’s lived in this town for nearly two years now, become a familiar face: the quiet Englishman with the blonde hair and sideburns, the nice clothes and even nicer manners, who speaks fluent Italian in a low and gentle voice, who never makes a nuisance of himself and always minds his own business.  Here he is a professor, a scholar absorbed in his great work, a book about insects or architecture or poetry, no one is really quite certain, but he must be brilliant indeed, to be able to go off on his own and work on this book and only occasionally travel out of town to give lectures in the city.

 _Give lectures_. When he thinks about it, it’s actually funny.

The first few months here, all the middle-aged women kept trying to push their unmarried daughters on to him, but after a while they gave up. Through the grapevine he learned that they’d decided he was nursing a broken heart for some woman in London, perhaps a wife, perhaps a mistress, someone who died or left him for another man or could not leave her husband and children. _Quanto tragica_ , how sad that such a beautiful man should be so alone in life, with no one to warm his bed at night and make his breakfast in the morning, no sound of little children running through his garden. See how melancholy he is as he buys his bread and his newspaper, the brave set of his shoulders as he begins the long walk back to his house on the hill.

How would they feel if they knew the truth? Would they push their daughters on him with quite as much enthusiasm, or would they lock them away from his sight and curse the day he came to live in their town?

Concealment has always been his greatest strength. He’s spent most of his life hiding: hiding that he was homosexual, hiding how much he hated military school and his parents for leaving him there, hiding his loneliness and fear and uncertainty about who he was and is, about his place in the world. Hiding the terrible talent that he discovered so many years ago, even from the people who would eventually develop and exploit it. Hiding how thrilled he was to finally have found something he was really, truly good at, hiding how awful he felt that the thing he was good at was immoral and hateful and repugnant.

Later, hiding became a much more literal thing: hiding from the law, hiding from the people who’d been affected by his work in one way or another, hiding even from potential clients who were dodgy or careless or amateur. He hid in Bangkok and Bucharest, in Hong Kong and Hartlepool, in big cities and small towns, anywhere he could completely disappear, or else knit himself so thoroughly into the life of the community that it would seem as though he had always been a part of it.

And now this: hiding in this small town in the mountains, hiding the fact that he is not the least bit interested in anyone’s daughter, hiding the yawning emptiness and solitude and desolation of his life. How he keeps the radio on at all times so he doesn’t feel so alone. How he holds himself apart, careful not to look too long or too intently into the eyes of any of the pretty young men resident in the town or just visiting, especially not those who show even a passing interest in him. How he touches himself in the middle of the night with hands he pretends are the hands of someone he once knew, someone he loved, someone who left because he could no longer stand all the hiding. How he cries out the name in anguish as his release spills onto his hand, onto the sheets, pleasure tainted by the ache of memory, contaminated with the pain of loss.

 

In his life in this town, only one person ever comes to call on him, and it’s always very quick: no more than half an hour, usually at Brunetti’s. She is gorgeous, dark-haired, lithe. She turns heads everywhere she goes. He knows that some people think she’s the one -- the lost _inamorata_ , the woman he is supposedly pining for. He finds it very strange, that is hardly what she conveys with her body language, which is always brisk, efficient, professional.

Still, she does flirt with him a little because she can, and he flirts back occasionally because he knows she enjoys it. They look good together, and she’s vain enough to relish being seen with a beautiful man -- he’s self-aware enough to know that he’s beautiful, but in his trade it’s a disadvantage that he often wishes he did not have, to be memorable. He knows her only by her first name, Irene, and even so he never uses it, preferring the distance of formality.

Today, sitting at Brunetti’s after his bakery run, he sees her crossing the _piazza_ , wearing a delicious camel-coloured leather jacket and matching high-heeled, knee-high boots, a cream turtleneck and brown suede skirt that hug her figure, her usual briefcase in one hand. He rises to his feet gallantly.

“ _Professore_ ,” she greets him, extending her hand.

“ _Signorina_ ,” he answers, taking it in both hands. He pulls out a chair for her, pushes it gently back under her as she sits down.

She opens the briefcase, draws out a memory stick and pushes it across the table to him.  She taps the stick with a forefinger, perfect oval nail covered in perfect burgundy polish.

“This one is tricky,” she says, and that’s never good, never something that he likes to hear her say.

“In what way?”

“Very, very smart. Probably the smartest one you’ve ever been assigned to, and maybe the smartest you’ll ever get. He’ll be expecting you.”

“What’s he done?”

She leans back, looks genuinely puzzled. “I’m not sure, really. Jim didn’t tell me anything, which is very unusual.” Jim is his best client, the one who pays the most and hires him the most often, and Irene is his go-between. “And after you see what’s inside the memory stick, you’ll know more than I ever will.”

He nods, slides the stick into one pocket of his trousers. “All other arrangements remain the same?” They’re discussing payment now.

“Everything. Although you might be surprised at the compensation.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh?” He never works for anything less than his standard fee, it’s bad business and sends the wrong signal professionally.

“It’s a little – higher than usual.” She smiles. “Actually, not a little. _A_ _lot_.”

That’s usually not very good either. “Because this job’s … _tricky_ ,” he says, carefully repeating her earlier words.

“Not just that. I think there’s something personal about this one.” The look of puzzlement has returned to her face. “Jim seems to really dislike him. But I could be wrong. It could be that whoever _contracted_ Jim really dislikes him.” She rises to her feet. “At any rate, everything you need to know is in there.”

He stands, too. “All right then.”

She offers him her hand again. “Pleasure doing business, as always.”

He takes it. “The pleasure is mine.”

She winks at him, all flirty and saucy. _Does she even know? Of course she does, otherwise she wouldn’t do it._

She turns around and walks away. It could be a long time before he sees her again.

 

He doesn’t check the contents of the memory stick at once when he gets home. He puts on some music, putters around the garden a bit, makes himself a cup of tea and reads his paper. He takes his time.

When he’s ready, he takes the stick and goes into his study, locks the door. He fires up his computer, types in a code, puts his thumb to the biometric fingerprint reader. He puts his feet up on the desk and whistles while he waits for the machine to sort through the layers of encryption on the stick.

The machine pings when it’s ready for him.

The target is a man named Sherlock Holmes.

A detective -- _consulting detective_ , he calls himself. Early 30s, good family, good schools, IQ tested consistently off the charts from early childhood to adolescence, bit of a drug problem in his teens and early 20s. He’s been called in to assist Scotland Yard in various difficult cases. Reputation for being brilliant and brusque. Resident until a few months ago in London, at 221B Baker Street.

Lately he’s taken to moving around, from Singapore to Dubai, from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Right now he’s in Basel, but he won’t be there for long; a month at most, so that gives him just a little over two weeks. But Jim wants it done by the end of the month – the rationale for the deadline has been so kindly omitted from the file, _thank you, Jim_ – so that shaves off nearly another week. Rather short notice as far as these jobs go – often he has months to plan; the last job took nearly a year. The abbreviated time frame must have been another factor in the number of zeroes on the fee; if he wanted to, he could stop accepting jobs for five years and live like a king off the proceeds of this one.

But living like a king is not really his style. Concealment, as always; concealment is everything, it’s success or failure, it’s life or death.

And then he looks at the photographs.

Holmes is about six feet tall, thick hair a riot of dark, silky curls, eyes of indeterminate colour: grey, green, blue, depending on the light. The features are too irregular for beauty, which somehow renders them beautiful, thick brows, eyes the merest fraction of an inch too far apart, a retroussé nose, ridiculously full, well-shaped lips -- the upper lip looks professionally penciled in -- and bone structure that any fashion model would kill for. _There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion_ – wasn’t that Francis Bacon?

Idly, he thinks to himself that he’s never had such a good-looking mark before.

 

The next day, he stops by the post office to tell Signore Testa to hold all his mail; he needs to travel for a week or so to attend an academic conference, but he deliberately neglects to say exactly where. Signore Testa’s wife Antonietta is the town busybody – if she hears something juicy at 10am, the entire town knows by 10:28. Thank goodness nobody ever sends him anything important by mail; everything he gets in the post is from himself, sent via a remailing service from seemingly different parts of the world. He’s convinced she occasionally steams his letters open, so he takes care to send only the most boring documents, filled with either academic jargon or officialese. She must think him the most uninteresting man ever to live in this town.

He buys a paper – English today, always English before and after a job – but does not stop at Brunetti’s. Instead, he heads straight home, cleans out what little food there is in the refrigerator, and begins to pack.

When he’s done, he heads into the study, closes the door behind him, and makes a phone call to arrange a meeting with an old friend. It’s the one place he’ll always stop at before a job, because he doesn’t keep the tools of his trade anywhere near him, and he never keeps them after the job is done.

Someone picks up on the other end of the line, but doesn’t speak. Still, he knows it’s her – it’s always her, she lives and works by herself because that’s how she’s always done it -- so he starts talking.

“Hello, Fawn. I need the usual. Do you have one ready for me?”

She doesn’t answer, which always means _yes_.

“Good. If I take the first available train, I should be there by noon tomorrow.”

 _Okay_.

“I’ll see you then.”

A click on the other end as she hangs up.

Talking to Fawn is like going to confession, or at least how he imagines going to confession must be like: the distinct but invisible presence on the other side of a wooden panel, the assiduous _listening_. Fawn is a very good listener, the best he’s ever met in an endless parade of people whose lives depend on very good listening. They see each other once, maybe twice a year, always when he goes to pick up his gear, and she barely says more than a dozen words to him each time – the last time she said exactly five, three of them _no_ , he counted on the train ride home – but she’s the closest thing to a friend that he has in this world.

He makes a few other phone calls, then goes online to arrange travel and car rentals and accommodation.

That night he rests uneasy beneath the blankets. He kicks them off eventually, naked and restless. It’s just nerves, he tells himself, it’s been a long time since he had so little time to prepare for a job. And the compensation is obscenely high for a _detective_. He’s had heads of state and military leaders that went for much, much less, not much more than the standard fee. _What is so special about this one? What has he done, or what does he know?_

He doesn’t have the answers and he probably never will. He shifts position in the bed so that he’s lying on his left side, his cock half-hard even though he hasn’t been thinking anything vaguely sexual. He doesn’t want to be tired for the train journey in the morning, and pleasuring himself nearly always relaxes him, even as it leaves him feeling empty. So he begins to touch it. A light, feathery teasing at first, and then he needs much, much more. He grasps himself firmly and tugs, pulling the foreskin over the engorged head then drawing it back, running a thumb over the leaking slit, sensation flooding through him and crowding out all coherent thought.

The temperature seems to be rising in the room, his body flushed and febrile in arousal, generating heat from its core. His legs twist and rub against the sheets, skin hungry for contact, any kind of contact. The hand on his cock moves faster, _oh yes_ , hot and slick now with his own copious fluids, and everything he is, all his flesh and bone and muscle, feels as though it’s made entirely of fissile material, glowing and radioactive, _oh God, yes, just like that_ , _so close_. His free hand reaches up to grasp one of the bedposts, vein and sinew snaking and straining through the skin on his forearm, and _ah, yes, yes, Christ, so good, oh so good_ as he climaxes, streaking the sheets with ropes of come, gasping for air, his heart beating wildly, furiously in his chest.

He’s exhausted and doesn’t bother to clean himself except for a cursory wipe of his belly and chest with one end of the blanket.

Tomorrow, he won’t remember that his last thought before falling asleep was of exquisite bones and pale eyes set in an extraordinary face.

 

He’s at the train station at the crack of dawn, trolley case beside him. He’s bought a cup of strong black coffee from a stall not far from the station. On the train, he’ll have the sandwich he brought from home, made from the _ciabatta_ he bought the other day and the last of the _prosciutto_ and cheese.

The train arrives and he hops on. In a few hours he’ll be at Fawn’s workshop. He’ll have free run of the place and she’ll show him all the new toys, but he’ll always go back to the one that she made especially for him.

From there, no more trains: just a rental car and several hours of driving till he reaches Basel. 

Sherlock Holmes has an appointment with death.

And the quiet, blond Englishman is bringing it to him.


	2. The Recruit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A man arrives at his destination by means of many small steps -- and missteps. An assassin's journey is no different.

_He’s barely twenty and already pitching headlong into failure: back-termed at Sandhurst for not making the grade and for disciplinary problems (three fights, none of which he started, all of which he ended, and rather brutally, the last one the most serious). A drinking problem rapidly slipping out of his control, and now a nascent drug problem. His parents’ cold, silent disapproval._

_He’s stumbling out of a pub in Covent Garden at 1am, when a black Rolls-Royce pulls up in front of him. Its doors swing open, and two very large men, including the driver, come out._

_“Hello there,” a voice from the back seat calls out to him pleasantly._

_He looks warily at the two men, and even as he peers into the darkness of the car’s interior, he’s already contemplating whether to run away or fight, calculating his odds in his inebriated state against the opposition._

_“Who’re you? What d’you want?” he asks, his tongue lazy, his words sliding carelessly one into the other._

_“I think you might need a lift,” the voice says. It’s the voice of an old man, a bit rough, a bit scratchy._

_“No, thanks,” he says. “`ll take th’ train.” He’s dropping vowels now, the alcohol he’s consumed significantly slowing his systems and reflexes down._

_The man in the back seat is smiling -- he can hear it in his voice even though he can’t see the man’s face. “And I would let you. Except that my friends here wouldn’t dream of allowing you walk all the way to the station in your condition. Who knows what trouble you might get yourself into?”  
_

_He straightens up and steels himself to either run or fight. “I get the feeling I already `ave.”_

_But the two men are too fast for him; they quickly come up behind him, grasp his arms and twist them behind his back. He struggles violently but he suddenly feels the prick of a needle on the side of his neck and his body quickly goes slack, and his legs won’t hold him, and his arms feel like rubber. They shove him roughly into the back seat, shut the door behind him. He hears the doors in front slam shut, and the car lurches forward, causing him to tilt dangerously in the direction of the man’s lap._

_A hand shoots out in the darkness to push him back to a safe position, so that his back and head are resting on the back of the seat. “Steady now,” the voice says calmly.  
_

_“What d’you – what’d they do t’ me? Can’t … move,” he says, his speech even more slurred now, everything moving in a dizzying yet slow-motion haze, the streetlights, the passing scenery visible through the windows._

_“Just a little something to calm you down. The effects are temporary, I assure you.”_

_“Lemme out. You’ve no … no right … What d’you want from me?”_

_“Actually, this is all about what **you** want, dear boy.” The man leans back, relaxed, friendly. “I know, for one, that you hate the idea of going back to Sandhurst.”_

_“Go to hell.”_

_“Someday, I’m sure,” the man chuckles. “You’re not suited for the military life, my boy. All that regimentation. All that forced camaraderie. Being surrounded by other people all the time. You simply can’t stand it, can you? That’s why you underperform. Rebel. Lash out.”_

_“Who **are** you?” he asks again, trying vainly to move uncooperative limbs, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the lock of the car door. He can’t coordinate his movements with his intentions, can’t focus his eyes properly, can’t get his tongue to say the words his brain is screaming at him to say._

_“Let’s just say I’m … your Plan B.” He glances at the driver. “Mason? Change of plans. Let’s head straight for the Circus, please.”_

 

He arrives in Lugano some time after noon, having changed trains twice, in Padova and Milan. He had his sandwich a few hours before so he’s not really hungry, but he feels the need for coffee – however, not enough to settle for train station coffee. He’s thinking of hopping on a bus to the city centre, getting his caffeine fix there and then phoning Fawn to let her know he’s coming.

He’s about to get to the station’s forecourt when out of the corner of his eye, he sees a small, slim figure dressed entirely in black leaning against a wall. He turns his head; it’s Fawn. She gives him a barely visible nod, and then turns away; he’s meant to follow her.  He drags his trolley case along and they cross the forecourt, heading to the southern end for the local buses, never speaking, never even looking directly at each other.  They wait a few minutes, separated by other people also waiting for buses, until one pulls up and she moves to board it. He follows, and a bus attendant helps him stow his case away in the luggage compartment.

They sit a few rows apart, him behind her so he can better see her movements. The ride takes them to the outskirts of the city, where she lives in a quiet, fairly secluded area.

She gets off at the bus stop and keeps walking, while he retrieves his case from the compartment. He doesn’t need directions, he’s been here before. Turn left at the corner, up a slight, winding incline, another left and then a hard right, straight past a thick stand of trees. There are no signposts here, just a street lamp to mark the beginning of the narrow path that leads to her home and her workshop.

She leaves the gate open and he gets to it less than five minutes later. He latches the gate, then follows the path around to the back, to the kitchen. The door is unlocked, so he knocks and then comes in.

She is putting a plate of warmed, crusty bread rolls on the kitchen table, to join a small platter of cold cuts, sliced _bergkäse,_ pickles and butter, and a fresh pot of coffee. All the components of the classic _Walliserplatte,_ a typical Swiss country lunch.

She motions for him to sit and eat, and he’s surprised to find that he’s hungry after all.

“Join me?” he asks.

She sits with him, but doesn’t eat, just pours herself a cup of the strong black coffee. It’s comfortable, this, her contemplative silence, his occasional comments on the weather and the food and the train journey to Lugano. He knows everything he says has fully registered with her, and he feels no compulsion to fill up the silence. Time drips unhurried between them, seconds and minutes. He’s come to realise over the years that this part of his visits has become a necessary ritual, a means to centre himself before whatever may lie ahead.  Any difficulty he used to have over reconciling this complete … _peace_ that he feels in her presence, with the fact that she is both maker and merchant of death has long faded from memory.

When he’s finished, he pushes his plate away, drinks the last of his coffee, then turns to her.

She gives him a look.

 _Ready_?

“Let’s go.”

 

_They drive a long way, it seems, but it’s really only around half an hour, taking the second exit onto Whitehall, onto Cheyne Walk, and on, and on, his limbs still rubbery, onto the exit toward Heathrow Airport, a roundabout, a left turn, another roundabout. It’s begun to drizzle, and the raindrops collect on the car windows, catching the light of the street lamps they pass, leaving trails where they slide off the glass._

_“Do you know where we are, my boy?” the man asks._

_His head lolls, rather than turns, toward the window to his left. He sees the broad, dark shadows of buildings, streets lined with parked commercial vehicles._

_“`ayes,” he says, and his lack of control over his tongue infuriates him. "Industrial area."  
_

_The smile is there again in the man’s voice. “Good lad. Yes, you're right. We’re almost there.”_

_“Who are you?” he asks again._

_“My real name’s not important. But most of my people call me Control.” The man leans forward suddenly, offering him his hand, and he catches a brief glimpse of his face in the glow of a streetlight: deeply lined, with small, shrewd eyes, an expression on his face both sly and amused. Of course he can’t even lift his arm to shake the offered hand, and the man merely smiles and retreats into the shadows. “I run a very special … organisation. And we are always on the lookout for new talent.”_

_“Talent,” he repeats, the word thick in his mouth. “What d’you mean, talent?”_

_The Rolls slips into a deserted road, then stops at a huge iron gate. After a few seconds, the gate slides open. The car glides silently along a path that opens up unexpectedly to a much wider road, and through the windows, he can see a series of buildings that look like airplane hangars.  
_

_They pull into one of the massive structures, and he feels a tide of panic rising inside him. The numbness and lack of control over his body are gradually wearing off, but he knows it won’t happen fast enough to enable him to get away. When the car stops, the two men in front get out, then open the door on his side and haul him out of the back seat. They continue to drag him along by his arms, following the old man as he crosses the cavernous space to approach another man._

_This other man is around ten, fifteen years younger, hair just starting to go grey at the temples, watchful eyes partially obscured by owlish spectacles. He looks rather like an unsuccessful businessman: limp navy suit, crumpled trench coat, scuffed shoes a shade of brown remarkable only for how badly it clashes with the rest of his clothes._

_“Look what I brought you,” Control says, removing his leather gloves from his hands one finger at a time._

_The man looks at him for a long moment. “Is he drunk?” he asks Control cautiously._

_“Yes. And a little bit drugged. He’ll be coming out of it soon, though. I’d watch him if I were you.”_

_The bespectacled man approaches him, puts a hand to his face. He tries to struggle against it, but the other two men restrain him._

_“It’s all right,” he says, in a voice so quiet that he can barely hear it. “I just want to get a look at your pupils.” He puts the hand to his face again, gently pulling up first one eyelid, then the other, with a thumb. “Well, it’s definitely wearing off. How are you feeling?” he asks, a note of genuine concern in his voice. “Any nausea?”_

_“Fuck you.”_

_Control chuckles. “He’s a handful, that one. But he’s got potential.” The old man turns and winks at him. “Well, my boy. Welcome to the Circus.”_

“No, _no_ , **_no_**.”

John Watson has heard that voice say those words in exactly that same tone, and he knows it spells trouble. Still wet from his shower and wrapped only in a towel, he hurries out of his bedroom and into the hotel suite’s connecting living room.

The room service attendant looks up at him, his eyes clearly pleading for help. Sherlock Holmes has turned him around and is writing furiously with a ball-point pen on a sheet of paper on the man’s back.

“ _There_ ,” he says, highlighting his exasperation with a vicious slashing underscore that the attendant has no doubt felt through his uniform. “Simple instructions for poaching an egg. Any simpleton can manage that, and since your chef is obviously a simpleton, he should be able to handle this with no trouble.”

“Y-yes, sir.” He scrambles to move the trolley out of the room, but Sherlock stops him.

“My friend’s breakfast is fine. It’s _mine_ that you have so spectacularly bodged. I trust you will return within five minutes with the correct order, or your supervisor will hear of it.” He hustles the man out of the suite and slams the door behind him, then turns to John. “Good morning, John.”

John folds his arms over his chest. “Was that really necessary?”

“To provide the kitchen staff with instructions on how to poach an egg? Evidently, yes.”

“The poor man was terrified of you.”

Sherlock waves a hand carelessly in the air. “Better that he should be terrified of providing sub-standard service. Put some clothes on, Captain, your breakfast is getting cold.”

John takes a deep breath, summons patience from a deep reservoir. “I know you’re bored, Sherlock, but that’s no excuse to treat people the way you have for the last week.”

“If people behave like morons, who am I to treat them otherwise?” He flops down onto one of the suite’s plush sofas, laying his head on one cushiony armrest and draping a long, pyjama-clad leg over the back. “And speaking of morons, have you heard from my brother? He refuses to take my calls.”

“No, I haven’t.” John shakes his head as he walks back to his bedroom to get dressed. “And as for refusing to take your calls, I can’t say that I blame him.”

Sherlock lets out a low snarl of frustration. “He said he would call by the middle of the week,” he calls out to John, “and the middle of the week has come and gone. Exactly how long does he expect me to remain under house arrest like this?”

John rolls his eyes at the ongoing tirade, as he pulls his trousers on. “It’s hardly house arrest, Sherlock. Besides, it’s for your own protection.”

“I can’t take much more of this. I should be allowed to go out there and participate in the hunt.”

John walks back outside, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt as he goes. “Participate in the – good God, Sherlock, can you hear yourself? Have you forgotten what nearly happened to you in Tokyo? If Lestrade and I hadn’t found you …”

Sherlock heaves one of the sofa’s throw pillows at the wall opposite him with such force that it knocks a picture frame off the wall.

“Oh, _God_ ,” he roars. “Why are we _still_ talking about Tokyo?”

 

Tokyo had been nothing short of a disaster. Sherlock, bored nearly out of his mind, had managed to slip away from John’s constant vigilance. He had hopped on a train to Akihabara, not realising until it was too late that he’d been spotted by the people who had forced him to flee London in the first place.

John had just emerged from a shower when he realised that Sherlock had done a runner.  He swore under his breath, quickly tried to get his anger and fear under control. At the count of ten, he initiated the protocol that Mycroft had insisted upon when he’d hired him: to phone him as soon as he knew something was wrong, then to call a designated contact in the country that they were staying in to provide assistance. And only then to begin the search for Sherlock himself.

In Tokyo, the designated contact had been Gregory Lestrade, an Interpol agent temporarily seconded to Tokyo Interpol. He’d dropped everything to rush to the hotel and meet John.

“Any idea where he could have gone?” he’d asked after their initial introductions.

“Could be anywhere. He was at his wit’s end, being cooped up here with nothing to do.” John was almost apologetic. “He’s like that. Brain’s like a high-performance engine – can’t keep it idle for too long or it tears itself to pieces.”

Lestrade chuckled. “Yeah, I know.”

John was surprised. “You know? You’ve _met_ him?”

“Yeah, a long time ago. Then a couple months ago, the older brother asked if I’d take on protection duties. Good money, too, and I could have stepped away from the old day job. But I refused – God, life’s too short. Told me later that he’d hired an ex-SAS man instead,” he said, smiling at John. “Been wanting to meet you ever since. Shake your hand, wish you the best of luck, tell you you're made of stronger stuff than I am and all that.”

He then turned and walked into Sherlock’s bedroom in the suite. “Look at all this stuff -- you know what he was doing in here?” Lestrade pointed to a table that had been commandeered for what was obviously one of Sherlock’s experiments. When they both looked around the room, they realised that the table was not the only thing that had been commandeered: desk and bedside lamps, the television set, the hair dryer in the bathroom and other items had been taken apart and cannibalised for parts.

“What the hell is _that_?” Lestrade gestured toward the piece of machinery that had been assembled from the various components of the now-dead appliances in the room.

John bent forward, examining the contraption. “It looks like some sort of – Jesus, I have no idea.”

Lestrade shook his head. “God, look at this room. It’s a disaster area. Big Brother will not be happy when he gets the bill.”

John’s brow was furrowed in concentration. “If he wanted to look for parts for that – _thing_ , whatever it is, where in Tokyo would he go?”

Lestrade’s face lit up. “I know just the place.”

 

Fifteen minutes later they’d hopped on the Yamanote line to get to Akihabara station – right at the centre of the famed Akihabara electronics shopping district. “It’s massive,” Lestrade explained to him on the ride over. “About 500 square metres of shops selling computers, consumer electronics, hi fi equipment and components. It’s a real assault on the senses, too.”

John smirked. “Sherlock himself is a real assault on the senses. Sounds right up his alley. But that’s about the size of a small town -- how do you expect to find him?”

“If he’s building whatever that is in his room from scratch, he’ll be looking at components. The section for those is right near the train station.”

As if on cue, the train slowed to a halt, and they were there. Lestrade kept talking as they left the train and headed out of the station. “If he’s looking for wires, electrical tools or components, he’ll be combing through the shops and stalls of Soto Kanda 1-chōme. Come on, it’s this way.”

John had been happy to follow Lestrade’s lead – he had an easy competence that John found reassuring in the wake of his concern over Sherlock’s safety. He had been in combat operations, assaults, hostage rescues and other life-or-death situations before, but this is different. He’d never had to baby-sit anyone before, let alone someone like Sherlock, who seemed to have a colossal death-wish and an even more colossal brain and will to make it happen.

Lestrade paused at one shop to speak to the owner – a small, grey-haired woman who looked to be in her late 60s. He took a photograph out of his wallet – and here John wondered what he was doing with a photograph of Sherlock in the first place – and showed it to the owner.

“ _Kono hito mitakoto arimasuka?”_

The woman studied the photograph, shook her head, said a few words that John couldn’t understand, but it was clear she hadn’t seen him.

As they walked away, John asked, “Speak Japanese, then?”

“Comes in handy on karaoke nights,” Lestrade replied, smiling mischievously at him. “Besides, knowledge of at least one foreign language is pretty much a requirement if you’re going to work for Interpol.”

“How many do you know?”

“Four.”

“Consider me impressed.”

They moved on to a few other shops and stalls without making any headway, until they got to a corner shop. “Let’s try our luck here,” Lestrade said.

He flashed one of the young shop assistants the photograph again and asked the same question. This time, however, the assistant nodded vigorously, then turned around to call out to another co-worker. The other man came over, looked at the photograph, then began speaking to Lestrade in rapid Japanese.

Lestrade shook his head, looking very pleased. “ _Docchino houni iki mashitaka?”_ he asked, and both shop assistants pointed to the right, down the alley. Lestrade thanked them and glanced at John. “They saw him – he headed that way. Come on!”

They ran down the alley, but after passing a few shops, they started noticing people running toward them from the opposite direction. They were afraid – not running, but fleeing from something. As they continued down the alley, they heard people shrieking and screaming. “What the hell –“ John said and Lestrade put out a hand to stop him.

“Hang on, John. Time to call for back up,” he said, and fished out a mobile phone from his pocket. He spoke quickly, urgently into the phone when someone picked up at the other end, obviously giving instructions on where they could be found. When he hung up, he tapped John on the arm. “Okay, let’s see what’s going on over there.”

They worked their way down the alley, in the direction that people were fleeing from, and a few moments later they both stopped cold, then ducked behind a shop wall.

There were two Caucasian men with guns standing inside a shop. One of them was pointing his gun at Sherlock; the other man, who looked quite nervous, was weaving back and forth between the shop assistants and the hapless shoppers who were trapped in there with him.

“Jesus,” John muttered under his breath.

Lestrade reached into his jacket for a pistol. John stared at it.

“I thought Interpol agents didn’t carry guns.”

“This one does,” Lestrade grinned, then reached into the back of his trousers to draw out yet another one. “This one carries two, in fact. `Cause you never know when an ex-SAS man might need one.” He handed it to John. “Don’t think we have time to wait for the local police, do you?”

John checked the pistol, a Glock 17. It felt solid and steady in his hand. “Right. How do you want to do this?”

“The old-fashioned way. We try to reason with them, and if they won’t listen to reason, we tell everyone to hit the deck.”

“Not very sophisticated.”

Lestrade grinned at him. “I’m a meat-and-potatoes man myself. I’ll take the straightforward approach. You go round the back and try to get behind Twitchy over there.”

John nodded. “You take care.”

“Always,” Lestrade said, flash of white teeth against lightly tanned skin. “Ready?”

John doubled back and turned a corner so he could approach the shop from the direction the two gunmen weren’t facing. He thought to himself that they didn’t seem particularly experienced, which to his mind made them just as dangerous – if not more so – as a real, seasoned professional. The one Lestrade had called Twitchy, in particular, worried John. The name seemed so apt, now – he appeared likely to be jumpy and unpredictable.

As John moved closer, he could hear Sherlock taunting the two men. “This really isn’t a very smart way to approach the job. But then again, if you two are in this line of work, I don’t suppose _smart_ is one of your best qualities.”

Suddenly, people started screaming again. John saw that Lestrade was now in plain sight of the two gunmen.

“Okay, boys, let’s just take it easy,” he said, in a calm, even voice. “The police are on their way, and we don’t want these other people to get hurt, do we?”

“I’d stay out of this if I were you,” the man who had cornered Sherlock replied coolly in German-accented English. “This isn’t any of your business.”

“Oh, but it is.” Lestrade looked at Sherlock. “You okay?”

John could only see the back of Sherlock’s head, but he could clearly hear the eye-roll in the answer. “Obviously.”

Lestrade turned back to the man. “Look, you only want this guy, right? So why don’t we let these other people go, hmmm? They don’t speak English, they don’t understand what’s going on, they have nothing to do with all this. What do you say, eh?”

John saw the quick glance that Lestrade gave him, and it was his signal to get into position behind Twitchy.

“ _Minasan fusete kudasai!_ ” Lestrade yelled out suddenly, and everyone but the two gunmen hit the floor. “ _Ugokanaide_!”

Twitchy started firing randomly inside the shop.

John had only a split-second to decide whether to incapacitate him with a shot to the knee or the shoulder, or to kill him. His training kicked in like instinct, and his finger was pulling the trigger even before his brain could put the decision into words.

Twitchy dropped to the floor and John didn’t pause for a moment. He leapt forward and put the hot muzzle of the just-fired pistol against the head of the man who was aiming at Sherlock. “Now you seem like the more sensible of the pair of you,” John said, his quiet voice dense with menace. “I think you know what to do.”

The man raised both hands in the air, and Lestrade was quick to seize the gun from him.

“Nice work,” he said, winking at John.

Sherlock got up off the floor, smoothed out his suit jacket and brushed any dust off it. Then in a blur of motion, he drew back and decked the gunman, sending him toppling onto rows of flimsy wire shelves. He flexed his fingers and examined his knuckles afterward.

“I suppose I ought to thank the both of you,” he said drily.

“Well, don’t hurt yourself,” Lestrade answered. They could hear the sirens of approaching police cars. The Interpol man turned and patted John on the shoulder – his wordless way of saying, _good luck, mate, you’ve got your hands full._

They couldn’t go back to the hotel for their things – Mycroft had arranged for someone to pack everything up. They wouldn’t know until weeks later that Tokyo Interpol had taken issue with Lestrade’s actions, so he was pulled out and transferred back to headquarters in Lyon. By then, they were in a rented villa in the Jimbaran area of Bali. The hit-man was no help trying to trace the people who’d engaged him – he’d never met any of them in person, all the communications had been conducted via telephone and e-mail; the electronic trail had quickly gone cold.

The incident had left John with a deep fear of letting Sherlock out of his sight – a fear that his brother thankfully shared. So Mycroft had increased the surveillance on his brother and had since continued shuttling him from country to country until he was satisfied that the danger had passed.

So far, there has been no sign that it has.

 

John ignores the flying pillow and the shattered picture frame.

“We’re still talking about Tokyo because you nearly got killed there. We’re still talking about Tokyo because the next time it happens, they’ll be sending the real thing. No more half-assed freelancers who advertise in the tabloids. We were lucky in Tokyo, we might not be so lucky the next time. Are you listening to me?”

“I detest being infantilised. And my brother pays you to assist him in doing so.”

John opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it tight against the torrent of angry words he wants to say, setting his lips in a grim line. He takes another deep breath, curses Mycroft Holmes silently, then turns away and moves toward the breakfast trolley.

There’s a knock on the door. John looks through the peephole; it’s the room service attendant bearing a covered tray and looking completely stressed.

“Well, Your Majesty. Your egg has arrived.”

_  
_

_The man in the spectacles is pushing a cup of coffee toward him. “Here, drink this. It will help to clear your head.”_

_“Fuck you. You let me go right now, you hear?”_

_“I hope to, soon enough. I’d just like a chance to talk to you. Show you around the place.”_

_“I don’t care if this place is a fucking seaside resort,” he spits out furiously. “You people abducted me, and if my family don’t hear from me in a few hours, there’ll be hell to pay. My father is in the military too, in case you didn't know. He'd hunt you all down and tear you to pieces.”_

_The man takes a deep breath and laces his fingers together on the table._

_“You stopped speaking to your family last year,” he says quietly – almost sadly, as if it pains him to say this. “You haven’t been in contact since … oh, around Christmas. You had a big argument with your father about your dislike for the military life, and you stormed out of his house. You don’t answer your mother’s phone calls or emails.”_

_He sits there stunned and, to be honest, quite frightened._

_“Who the hell are you people? Why do you know these things?”_

_“I’m sure Control told you. We’ve been watching you for quite some time. Monitoring your progress at school. Examining your strengths and skills, your weaknesses.” He stands. “Look, there’s no point in me talking at you when you’re in this mood. Why don’t we go for a stroll around the grounds? It’s nearly 3am but there’s a lot going on here even at this hour. You might find it interesting. What do you say?”_

_He finds himself rising unsteadily to his feet._

He takes the case from Fawn; the weight of it feels familiar in his hand. “I’ve wired the funds already. Have you checked?”

She nods; everything is in order.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure as always,” he says. “Until next time, then.”

He’s about to turn away when she touches his arm to stop him. He looks at her questioningly.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

She hesitates. “This job – “ she begins.

He shakes his head. “You know I never discuss my work.”

“I know. Just … be careful.”

It’s so unlike her that it gives him pause. “Why, what’s wrong?”

She folds her arms across her chest. “I don’t know. Something feels … wrong.”

Fawn never talks unless she absolutely has to, and for her to say this much at one go is unnerving to him. “Wrong, how?”

“I can’t explain it. It’s just a -- ” She draws her arms closer around herself, as though she’s feeling a chill. “A feeling I have. Listen, I don’t expect you to … Just be careful, all right?”

He feels a sudden impulse to pull her to him and drop a kiss on her forehead, but he knows it would only make her feel even more uncomfortable than she already is. So he restrains himself. Instead, he merely says, “Don’t worry. I always am.”

She steps back and it’s his cue to take his leave. He turns around, dragging his trolley case in one hand and holding the equipment case in the other. 

He doesn’t look back even once as he heads down the path that will take him back to the bus stop. If he did, he would have seen her watching him, a look of utmost concern – no, not concern, but _fear_ \-- clouding her features.

 

Sebastian Moran has spent the better part of an hour waiting for James Moriarty at his university office. He’d told the secretary that he was consulting the professor on plans for an academic conference that he was helping to organise. She was profusely apologetic and said that it could take a while, as he was at a lecture. He said he didn’t mind waiting.

When the door opens, it’s Professor Moriarty who walks in, calm, quiet, rather timid-looking, a scholar and intellectual.

When the door closes behind him, it’s Jim Moriarty, cold, brilliant, amoral and anything, anything but timid.

“Hello, Sebastian,” he says in that slightly sing-song way of his. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Moran shrugs, drapes himself even more languidly over the chair. “Didn’t have anything better to do.”

“Well, you will soon.” Jim rifles through his desk drawers until he finds what he’s looking for. He tosses the envelope over the desk and Moran catches it deftly in one hand.

“How would you fancy an all-expenses-paid trip to Switzerland?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been to Japan, and what little I know of Akihabara, I found online! Neither do I speak Japanese, so I asked a native Japanese speaker for help with the translations; I'm sorry I don't know how to make the sentences clicky so you can see the English translation simultaneously within the text, so here they are:
> 
> KONO HITO MITAKOTO ARIMASUKA?  
> This person have you seen before?
> 
> DOCCHINO HOUNI IKI MASHITAKA?  
> What direction did he go?
> 
> MINASAN FUSETE KUDASAI  
> Everybody get down
> 
> UGOKANAIDE!  
> Don’t move


	3. Groundwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stage is slowly being set for the assassination of Sherlock Holmes. But the assassin himself has no guarantee of safety.

When he leaves Fawn’s workshop, he hops on another bus and heads immediately for the car hire company. He asks the woman at the front desk – around his age, no wedding ring, past the bloom of youth and fraying a bit at the edges -- about the car he’d booked online two days before. 

She takes one look at him and is instantly flustered. She drops her pen on the floor,  hits her head on the desk on her way back from picking it up, croaks a reply and has to clear her throat two or three times before her voice can come out properly. He’s used to this sort of thing after all these years, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. He gives clipped, no-nonsense answers to all of her questions, inviting no unwarranted conversation. He resists the urge to glance at his wristwatch; he doesn’t want to convey the impression that he is in a hurry, even though he is. From here on, nothing he does must be remarkable, memorable, worthy of suspicion.

When she asks for identification, he hands over a fake ID and the corresponding credit card. He signs the papers and then waits patiently while she goes to another room just behind the desk for the keys.

She comes back out again and hands them to him.

“Thank you,” he says, and turns away.

“There’s a train,” she calls out helpfully.

He stops and turns back to her. “Excuse me?”

She smiles shyly at him. “A train. From here to Basel. Why don’t you just take the train?”

He smiles back, although he thinks to himself yet again that he should probably colour his hair at some point, or try and get someone to break his nose. _Something, anything, to change this look, this face: to make it more common, more uninteresting_.

“I know. But I like to think when I’m driving.” He gives her a quick nod. “Have a good day.”

 _Don’t_ , he commands her in his mind as he walks toward the door. _Don’t say anything more. Don’t talk to me again_. _Don’t remember me._ He sees her reflection in the glass door, staring after him with eyes both hungry and sad, and he pushes past it, out into the sunshine, as far away from her as he can get.

 

He gets to Basel a few hours later, checks into a hotel near the city centre. The room is expensive for what it is -- _isn’t everything in Basel?_ \-- but he’s not looking for luxury, so it’s more than adequate. The first thing he does is set up his computer; the next is to telephone Irene as he had been instructed.

“Glad to hear from you,” she says when she picks up, not even bothering to say hello or confirm that it is, indeed, him.

“You have something for me?” he asks, likewise dispensing with the niceties.

“We think we’ve got a location.”

“You _think_.”

“I’m still waiting for confirmation. But one of our people thinks Holmes is staying in one of the executive suites of the hotel he’s stationed at.”

“And when are you going to get confirmation?”

“Soon. In the meantime, you could do your own nosing around.” She phrases it as a suggestion, but he knows better. He grabs a pen and some hotel stationery from a dresser drawer.

“All right, tell me.”

Less than two hours later, he’s watching the hotel from the rooftop of a nearby building with a high-powered portable telescope. It had been simple enough to get past this building’s lax security, and he’s in a good position now to watch the windows of the hotel. He knows -- from the blueprints that he downloaded by hacking into the hotel’s computer systems -- that the windows of the executive suites face this way, and that they each have a tiny balcony where a guest might be able to watch the city or smoke a cigarette.

He also knows, from one or two of the photographs in the dossier from Jim, that his quarry smokes.

He’ll spend a few hours watching from this vantage point, hoping to catch a break -- at least until Irene calls with confirmation that his quarry is, indeed, staying there.

 

_The man in the glasses is now leading him down a maze of corridors, then outdoors, onto a covered walkway that leads to an adjoining building. The drug has mostly worn off by now, and he keeps thinking anytime now would be a good time to deck the man and make his escape. But something holds him back: curiosity, certainly, but also something in the other man’s manner, a kind of paternal gentleness beneath the Sphinx-like mask. Gentleness – but surely not directed toward him? It makes him feel as though he does have a choice -- as though he really can walk out of here after he goes through the motions, after he allows himself to be shown around._

_For now, he lets go of the impulse to knock him unconscious and make a run for it._

_The man holds a door open for him. “Jim’s just started with one or two of our new recruits. Come and meet him.”_

_There’s another maze of corridors before they get to a heavy steel door. The man punches in a series of numbers on an electronic keypad and pushes the door open. He glances back at him.  
_

_“Got the number, did you?” he asks with a smile, as though he can read his mind._

_He’s a bit startled – the question has brought him up sharply, sweeping away that false sense of security he was just starting to feel in this man’s presence and setting firmly in its place the deep sense of unease that he had felt just under an hour ago in that car. But he recovers his composure in a split-second, and answers defiantly: “Four-three-one. Seven-zero-two.”_

_The man nods at him approvingly, as though genuinely pleased, although he can’t imagine why. “Good. Come along.”_

_The space they’ve entered is rather poorly lit, and seconds later, he hears the muted sound of gunfire.  His heart starts to race, but the man keeps walking ahead of him, clearly untroubled._

_“What’s going on here?” he asks._

_“Training,” the man says over his shoulder. He turns right into a better-lit corridor, then left into another corridor lined on one side with large glass panels. He looks through the panels and quickly realises that this part of the entire compound is an indoor pistol shooting range._

_The man stops at one panel, and knocks on the glass. There is another man on the other side of the glass: a towering figure, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He turns around, gives the bespectacled man a thumbs-up, then moves toward the door to the right of the panel. The door opens._

_“Mr. Smiley,” he says, before stepping aside to make way for him. “Come on in.”_

_They enter what appears to be a soundproofed room that looks out to the shooting range itself._

_“Jim,” the man called Smiley now says. He gestures toward the two men firing away outside. “How are those two doing?"  
_

_“They’ve only just started, so I think they’ve got some way to go yet.” Jim sighs. “A **long** way to go.”_

_Smiley frowns. “Alleline’s boys, eh?”_

_“He sure knows how to pick `em. Good for support ops.” Jim shrugs. “Maybe.” He says that last word without a great deal of confidence or conviction._

_He casts a glance at their newcomer. “Who’s this?” he asks warily._

_Smiley turns to him. “Jim, I’d like you to meet Peter.”_

_“Peter.” Jim moves toward him. He engulfs the younger man’s hand – already large by any standard – in his own massive one. He gives it a few pumps, then lets go and turns back to Smiley. “One of yours, then?”_

_“One of Control’s.”_

_“Ah,” he says; it’s as though a cloud lifts from his face and the corners of his mouth turn up slightly in the hint of a smile. “Got potential, eh?”_

_Smiley looks back at him kindly. “He certainly seems to think so.”_

_“Well, why don’t we see what he can do?” He moves toward a long wooden counter on one side of the room, picks up a pair of shooting gloves and tosses them at him, looking pleased when he catches them deftly._

_“Any good with guns?"_

 

The bell rings, followed by a knock on the door. John, pistol in hand, checks the peephole. When he sees who’s outside, he tucks the pistol into the back of his jeans, and then opens the door.

“Room service, sir.” It’s the same room service attendant.

“Right, come on in,” John says kindly.

The man appears hesitant to wheel the trolley in at first, but John nods and he enters the room.

“Grilled salmon with new potatoes,” he says, lifting the cover off one plate. “Cheese platter,” he says, lifting another.

“Thank you.” John signs the order with his alias and hands it back to the man.

“Is he here?” he asks nervously.

John glances at the door to Sherlock’s bedroom. “He’s asleep.”

The man looks relieved. “I’m terribly sorry about – well, you know, sir.”

John shakes his head. “It’s nothing, really. He gets that way sometimes. Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s just that –“ and he seems to want to get this out, it’s important to him, he needs to say it. “I haven’t been doing this very long. I don’t have a great deal of experience. I—“ and here he tries to hold back a welter of emotion. “I’m going through a difficult time, you see, and I haven’t been able to hold down a job for very long.”

John nods, beginning to feel uncomfortable. “Really, it’s all right. I’ll have a talk with him. His bark is far worse than his bite.”

“Thank you, sir.  I appreciate it. I – I hope you’ll extend my apologies to him, as well.”

A gentle pat on the shoulder from John seems to assuage his worry somewhat, and then the phone in the suite rings. John turns to answer it. When he picks up, the door of Sherlock’s bedroom opens, and he wanders out in a blue silk dressing gown. His gaze goes first to John on the phone, and then to the room service attendant, who is looking intently at John’s – _arse_?

He clears his throat to catch the attention of both men. John turns around to face him, acknowledging him with the briefest of nods, while the attendant, looks away and busies himself with taking care of the place settings. Sherlock frowns – _something’s not right here_ – but John is talking to him now.

“That’s all right, we’ll take care of that ourselves. Thank you.”

The attendant nods, gives him a deferential little bow, then leaves, closing the door behind him.

“Who was that on the phone?” Sherlock asks John at once.

“Your brother.”

“What did he say?”

 “He said _stay put for now_. What did you expect?” John folds his arms over his chest, expecting another confrontation. He’s surprised when Sherlock merely sinks into the sofa with a deep sigh.

“You should have allowed me to speak with him.”

“I couldn’t. Not with a stranger in the room.”

“Hmm. A stranger who seems to fancy you.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Fancy me?”

“He was staring at your backside.”

John rolls his eyes, then moves toward the trolley. “Clearly it’s time you ate something. Oh, and would you do me a favour? Stop showing yourself to the hotel staff?”

 

The attendant makes his way toward the lift. When he’s confident that he’s far enough away, he fishes a mobile phone out of his pocket and dials a number.

“Miss Adler?” he whispers urgently into the phone. “Yes. I’m quite sure it’s him.”

 

The darkness is settling over the city when he finally receives her call.

“I have confirmation,” she says.

He draws his coat closer around him; it’s getting chilly up here. “So he _is_ in there."

“Apparently. You can start planning your move, _Professore_.”

He continues to look through the telescope. “Which room?”

“1228.”

He quickly checks the hotel blueprints on his tablet; after he finds what he’s looking for, he positions the instrument to catch sight of the right balcony.

“I want to speak to your man inside,” he says.

She doesn’t answer at once. “That’s … highly irregular.” It’s true; their people usually do the legwork of tracing the quarry’s whereabouts and provide the information on how best to gain access. His job is merely to show up and do what he's been contracted to do.

“Make an exception, then,” he says. “Just this once.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked nicely.” There’s something in his voice, a tone that tells her he won’t accept _no_ for an answer.

“Nicely? I didn’t hear you say _please_.”

“Please.”

He can hear her drumming her fingers on a table. “I’m going to ask you again. Why?”

“Why?” he repeats, unable to keep the annoyance from creeping into his voice. “Because Jim has given me so little time to prepare for this. Because he’s withheld information from me. Because the bloated fee makes me nervous. Because I think I’m entitled to it. Take your pick.”

“Withheld – what information? What are you talking about?”

“You wouldn’t understand. I know more than you do about the mark, remember? I’ve seen what’s on the memory stick. You can clear it with him first, if you wish. But tell him I want to speak with your man on the inside before I do anything.”

“He won’t be pleased.”

He laughs a joyless little laugh. “I’m on the rooftop of a building with the temperature dropping fast. I’m really not in a mood to argue the finer points of what will or will not provoke Jim’s displeasure.”

He hangs up before she can say another word.

He takes one last look through the telescope before deciding to pack it up.

 

John is portioning out food on two separate plates when he sees out of the corner of his eye that the curtain to the balcony is billowing in the night air. All his senses are immediately on alert.

“Sherlock?” he calls out, running quickly. The sliding doors are open. “Sherlock!”

“I’m right here, John,” Sherlock drawls. John’s blood runs cold when he sees the other man coolly blowing cigarette smoke into the air.

“Jesus, Sherlock, are you honestly trying to get yourself killed?”

“No, John, I’m honestly trying to have a smoke.” He holds the opened pack out to John. “Did you want one?”

John stares at the pack, then back at Sherlock, and blinks once, twice, in disbelief. “You’re offering me a cigarette.”

“You look like you need one far more than I do.”

“Will you get the hell back in here before anyone sees you?” he says in utter exasperation, stepping aside so that Sherlock can pass. “Jesus, I can’t turn my back on you for a minute, can I?”

“I’ll come back inside when I’m finished with this, John. Otherwise -- perfect waste of a good cigarette.”

“ _Perfect waste of a_ – all right, here, let me help you with that.” John angrily plucks the cigarette out from between Sherlock’s lips, drops it on the floor of the balcony and grinds it out with the ball of his foot. “There. That should do it.” He looks at Sherlock with that dark, menacing expression he uses only very rarely – the one that clearly says _you do not want to be fucking with me right now_.  “Now get back in here. That’s not a request, by the way. In case you were wondering.”

Sherlock throws his hands up in mock resignation and moves reluctantly toward the sliding doors.

“Tetchy, tetchy,” he taunts John. “Admit it. All this confinement is driving you up the walls, too.”

 

He’s about to swing the telescope away when the full-length glass doors slide open and a tall, slim figure clad in a blue dressing gown steps out onto the balcony.

Suddenly his entire body is tense, and he slips into that familiar state of heightened watchfulness.

It’s him, all right -- he hasn’t even bothered to alter the way he looks in any way: same head of dark curls, no facial hair, nothing to disguise his features. He moves, cat-like, toward one end of the tiny balcony, draws something from the pocket of his dressing-gown.

 _Ah._ _Recklessly obeying an impulse to smoke. Unmindful of the danger he’s putting himself in by doing so.  
_

He watches the detective intently through the telescope. The majority of his marks have been fairly well-known – politicians, military officials, criminals of one sort or the other. People whose activities and movements have been well-documented in pictures and video, either by the international media or by law enforcement agencies. It’s very, very rare that he’s only seen a mark in still photographs before embarking on a job. To observe this one for the first time – displaying a kind of unhurried, fluid grace in each motion – is something of an unexpected pleasure. His gaze lingers on the movement of Holmes’ hands: those long fingers, as they bring the cigarette to his lips and light it, the lines of that smooth, pale neck as he throws his head back to savour that first, slow, deep drag.

There is a sudden movement at the sliding doors, and soon enough another man comes out onto the balcony. Shorter than the detective, hair a dark blonde just beginning to go grey at the temples, he looks positively irate. They exchange words, but Holmes looks completely unruffled. The other man steps forward, yanks the cigarette from his lips and stubs it out angrily with a foot. It’s evident that this is his minder – possibly a bodyguard of sorts – and he’s pissed off that Holmes has stepped out into the open like this.

Holmes shrugs, holds his hands up, glides back into the room. The other man looks warily around – from one side of the balcony to the other, and then at the buildings across – before going back into the room himself, shutting and locking the sliding doors behind him, and drawing the curtains closed.

 _Show’s over_ , he tells himself.

Yet inexplicably, he lingers on the rooftop for a good half-hour, waiting to see if Holmes will steal out onto the balcony again.

 

He’s exhausted by the time he gets back to his hotel room. He hasn’t had anything to eat since the near-silent meal at Fawn’s; now he’s ravenous. He flips impatiently through the room service menu but nothing really appeals to him. Still, he needs to eat something, so he calls room service and orders himself a _pastetli_ with mushrooms and a cold beer.

As he waits for his meal to arrive, he turns on the television set, going through the channels until he finds a news network. He sits on the edge of the bed and removes his shoes and socks, begins to undress, leaving only his trousers.

The bell rings and he looks through the peephole before opening the door to let the room service attendant in. He stands aside as the trolley is wheeled in, signs the bill when it’s handed to him and closes the door when the man leaves.

He eats his meal in front of the television, his face illuminated in the flickering blue light: the parade of images chronicling the incurable madness of history. It’s almost comforting, this; this is one of the few times that he feels part of the mainstream, instead of outside looking in. The world of the news channel and the newspaper is a world where he fits right in, a world where his crimes seem trifling in comparison to the great atrocities of his time. He’s able to pretend for a while that the rest of humanity isn’t just quietly going about its daily business, falling in love, raising families, making friends: all the things he’s excluded from, all those luxuries of normalcy that he’s been denied, or that he’s denied himself.

When he’s finished, he stacks the dishes neatly on the trolley and heads for the bathroom. He strips completely naked and moves toward the shower stall. He runs the water till it’s good and hot, then steps under the spray.

It happens almost without his thinking about it, the movement of his hand toward his cock, already half-erect. The water beats steadily against his chest, teasing his nipples into stiff, pale peaks. The palm of his hand brushes over the swollen, reddening head of his cock, and the entire shaft jerks in response. He grasps himself firmly now, tugging, fondling, the heat and urgency and fullness building.

When he closes his eyes, he’s assailed by a series of images, bathed in the flickering blue of a television screen: the blue of darkness falling over the city, the blue of a silk dressing gown, the lazy, drifting curl of blue smoke from a cigarette. He turns away from the relentless spray and leans forward against the wall, pressing his forehead and one hand against the black marble tile, now warming from the heat of the shower. His other hand works himself, his stroking rapid and increasingly desperate, helped along by the water and by the slickness of his own generous fluid.

He moans, softly at first. But as the heat and heaviness below his belly become almost unbearable, the moan grows into a low growl, mindless, primal, animal.  His entire body stiffens, then trembles when he comes: a small but frighteningly powerful seismic event contained within the boundaries of his flesh and bone and skin. The darkness behind his closed eyelids explodes in cold white light.  When his cock pulses out the last of his seed, white streaks contrasting with the black marble, he collapses against the wall, his chest pressed to the wet tile. He breathes through his mouth, each intake ragged, shallow.

He leans against the marble until his heart rate and breathing return to normal, until he’s come back fully to himself again. It’s at that moment that something clicks inside his head, something cold and rational, merciless in its clarity, and that small, still voice he’s obeyed all these years issues an unequivocal warning.

 _Don’t fantasise about someone when you already know you’re going to put a bullet in his head_.

 

At breakfast the next morning, he waits at the hotel café with a double espresso and an English newspaper. He’s had a simple meal of buttered toast and fruit, and he’s looking through the business section, reading about the dire developments in the Eurozone. Idly, he supposes he’s fortunate to be working in the top tier of such a highly specialised industry, largely immune to the vagaries of global market economics.

He hears the clicking of heels on marble and soon catches a whiff of a familiar perfume. He looks up.

“I certainly hope you’re having a good morning." She tosses her purse in the chair across his and sits down, crossing her shapely legs. "I know I’m not.”

“I suppose you’ve come here to tell me your inside man isn’t coming,” he says, signalling to a passing waiter to bring her a menu. She quickly shakes her head, indicating to the waiter not to bother.

“I’m not hungry,” she says. “And yes, he _is_ coming. But Jim took a great deal of convincing over the telephone last night, and I have to say he’s not very happy with you right now.”

He shrugs. “There’s a first time for everything.”

She leans back in the chair, gazing at him with something akin to fascination. “You know, I’ve always thought you were an interesting man. But this is ... this is downright foolish and completely reckless.” She moves toward him, her lips curve in a small, seductive smile, and lays a hand lightly on his knee. “And damned sexy.”

He folds up the newspaper and lays it carefully beside his cup and saucer. He’s not in any mood for the usual harmless flirtation now; it’s a distraction and he scrupulously avoids distractions in the run-up to a hit.  So he ignores it and folds his hands together in his lap, a slight movement of his leg forcing her to withdraw her hand.

“What time is he coming?”

The smile fades quickly from her face as she feels the sting of rejection. She tilts her head a bit toward the left, looking over his right shoulder. “That’s him over there.”

He turns and looks behind him. A small, thin man with thinning, dishwater-blond hair is scurrying over to their table. As he comes closer to them, he notices the eyes (a rheumy, highly desaturated blue), the greedy smile he bestows on Irene, the prominent overbite, and he takes an instant dislike to him. There is something oily and furtive in those twitching, rodent-like features.

Irene motions for him to take the last empty seat at the table. As always, she wastes no time on conventional pleasantries.

“Günter. Tell him what you told me.”

The man turns those disconcerting, watery blue eyes on him. “They checked in around two weeks ago, from the records, under assumed names. I didn’t get to service the floor until early last week, on rotation. At first I only ever saw the blond man -- I was told to keep a lookout for Holmes, so I didn’t think anything of it and kept my eyes open for any sign of him."

"And then yesterday when I took breakfast up to the room, it wasn’t the blond man who answered the door. This one was tall, slim, dark-haired. I was almost sure it was him, then, and he was a world-class prick, let me tell you.”

Günter is spilling his story with breathless eagerness, and he can’t help but feel like punching the man. But he restrains himself, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs instead. “Go on.”

“Well, I didn’t want to tell Miss Adler anything until I was a hundred per cent sure. So when they sent for dinner last night, I made certain I was asked to take it up to them. Holmes wasn’t anywhere in sight at first, it was the other man who let me in. When he turned around to answer the phone, I saw that he had a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. That’s when I realised – this was Holmes’ bodyguard. Then Holmes came out of the bedroom. He gave me a funny look and I knew I had to get out of there at once. I left the food and called Miss Adler as soon as I had the chance.”

The man looks inordinately pleased with himself at the end of his account.

He has to take a sip of coffee to somehow mask his disgust. _Does he even know? But of course he does; he’s probably performed this function for other jobs. Such obscene glee, knowing he’s condemning a man to his death_. Maybe he’s too old-school; he’s never been one to crow over a good hit. That’s the way he was taught, by men who drilled it into him that complacency was his greatest enemy.

He sets the cup back on the saucer, fully aware now of how closely Irene is observing him.

“He’ll undertake the same preparations that we usually handle for you. He can get you inside, past hotel security.”

“There’s private security, too,” Günter adds at once. “I’ve seen them. They’re not easy to spot, but I’m quite sure there are at least three positioned on the same floor, including a woman.”

Irene turns to him. “Well?”

He’s quiet for a while, then he ask Günter: “The other man. Does he ever leave the room?”

“Not for very long, I don’t think.”

He looks at Irene. “I want to set up cameras. Inside and outside the room. See if there’s any pattern to the movements on that floor. I want to know exactly what I’ll be dealing with. One bodyguard, I can handle. Four is still fine, but it will be difficult to dispatch them discreetly. I’m sure our employer appreciates … discretion.”

She smiles. “That, he does.” She turns to Günter. “So you can handle the arrangements and facilitate access?”

“Yes. I’ll get him a new staff pass and a staff uniform --” and then he turns to him, looking him over. “Not ordinary housekeeping or service. Something ... managerial. A floor supervisor.”

“Good,” she replies, satisfied. “We don’t have much time.” She turns to him again. “The sooner you start on this –“

“Today,” he says, cutting her off smoothly. “We’ll start today.”

 

The phone rings in Moran’s hotel room just as he is towelling off from a shower. He picks it up.

“Hello.”

“Sebastian,” says the voice at the other end. “How are you enjoying your visit to Basel so far?”

He throws the towel to one side of the bed and sits on the edge. “Not too bad. Room’s nice, thanks. Getting bored, though, to be honest.”

“Then you’ll love the news I have for you,” Jim says brightly. “I seem to be having a bit of – trouble with my independent contractor.”

“Trouble?”

“Nothing too serious yet. But I confess, I’m a little concerned because he’s usually quite reliable.”

“What’s he done?”

A sigh. “Just an uncharacteristic breach of protocol. Nothing that should concern you too much. At least, not at the moment. But I do need you.”

Moran fingers the newly-cleaned compact submachine gun in the open case on his bed. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“First I want you to get a good look at the contractor.” There’s the creak of a swivel chair’s springs as Jim moves, very likely from one end of his desk to another. “And then I want you to step in if he fails to do what he’s being paid to do.”

Moran frowns.

“If you had doubts about him, why didn’t you just ask me to take on the hit in the first place?”

Jim clucks at him. “Sebastian. _Seb_. Are you feeling jealous? No, really. Do you feel as though I’ve neglected you? Passed you over for someone else? Someone – oh, I don’t know – faster, perhaps? Younger? More competent?” His tone goes flat and cold at once. “You know I don’t work that way. The contractor is one of the best in the field. But in case he doesn’t come through for me, I’m saving you as a very last resort. You’re my back-up plan. My ace in the hole. Happy now?”

Jim doesn’t wait for an answer, and just hangs up. Moran gets up to check his computer. He logs into his email account; there’s only one new message, and it’s from Jim. He opens the attachment, and then smirks.

“Well, well, _well_. Would you look at that,” he whispers to himself, the words dripping with spite and venom. “Pretty Boy sure gets around.”

 

 

 


	4. Ad Lib

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every assassination follows a kind of script. But when an assassin deviates from that script, there are consequences.

When John wakes up, he is sweating. It takes him a moment to register why: the air-conditioning in the suite seems to have gone out. He slides himself out from under the pile of blankets and sits on the edge of his bed, flicking sweat away from the side of his neck with the back of his hand. A quick glance at the clock on the room’s control panel tells him it’s just a little past 6am; already he can hear the soft strains of Sherlock’s violin from outside his bedroom. He slides his feet into a pair of the hotel’s complimentary paper slippers and shuffles out of the room.

Sherlock is standing shirtless in the living room, violin tucked between chin and shoulder. His skin is like the palest marble against the heather grey of his pyjama bottoms. The sliding doors are wide open.

“Jesus,” John says, practically running to close the doors and draw the curtains. “Are you really hell-bent on making yourself a target, Sherlock?”

Sherlock stops playing. “It’s too warm in here.”

“It will be plenty cold when you’re dead. When did the air-conditioning give out?” he asks, fully confident that Sherlock would have been awake when it happened.

“Two hours ago.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Why should I?”

“So I could call someone?”

Sherlock shrugs. “I didn’t think it was that much of a problem."

“But it was enough of a problem for you to fling the curtains and the balcony doors open and expose yourself to danger.”

“Don’t be dramatic, John,” Sherlock says. “I can’t fling the doors open. They _slide_.”

“Ha ha. Funny, that. You’re in the wrong profession, you know. You should go into comedy.” John picks up the phone, rings the front desk and explains the problem. A few moments later, he hangs up and turns to Sherlock. “Apparently it’s the entire floor. They’re looking into it, but the floor manager will be dropping by. I suggest you make yourself scarce.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “If he knows how to do his job, he’ll inspect the unit in my room as well. Where do you suggest I hide, under the bed? Besides, all the staff on this floor know that there are two of us occupying this suite. The more scarce I make myself, the more suspicious we seem.”

John keeps very still for a moment, fighting to control his frustration. “I didn’t mean _hide_ , Sherlock. I’m well aware of what the hotel staff do and do not know. I’m just saying, make yourself less – _conspicuous_.”

There’s a knock on the door and John glances at it, then back at Sherlock.

“Please?” he asks, in a tone that suggests something much harsher, much sterner than _please_.

Sherlock tucks the violin under his arm and glides away to his bedroom without another word. John checks that his pistol is near to hand, lying concealed beneath a small pile of newspapers on a console table not far from the door. He looks through the peephole, then opens the door a crack, leaving the chain hooked in place.

“Good morning,” the man outside says. He is dressed in a standard hotel uniform -- a navy blue suit at least two sizes too large for his lithe frame, with a nameplate pinned to his lapel: _M. Kronenberger_. He has the slight hint of an accent that sounds to John like German. He is good-looking in that generic way that most hotel employees seem to be, but his blonde hair is combed back in a particularly unbecoming style.

“Yes?” John asks cautiously.

“My name is Max. I am the floor manager on duty this morning,” the man says, and his tone is apologetic from the outset. “We have been trying to fix the problem with the air-conditioning for the past hour.”

John quickly looks the man up and down; then, finding nothing suspicious, he undoes the chain on the door and allows him into the suite.

“We think there may be a blockage, or perhaps a section of duct that has become disconnected,” Max explains as he enters, quickly turning around to look at the air-conditioning vent above the door. He then checks the digital panel thermostat on one wall, his movements brisk, efficient.

“May I check the units in the rooms?” he asks.

John hesitates a split-second, then nods. “Sure,” he says, pointing toward his room first. Max makes his way to the door, opens it, checks the vent and the panel, then heads toward Sherlock’s room.

John clears his throat. “I— I’m not sure that my traveling companion is decent at the moment, he did say he was going to take a shower. He’s rather … sensitive about his privacy.”

Max pauses briefly, a long, thin forefinger pointing in the direction of the room. “Oh, I apologise. Perhaps I could knock first? I won’t take more than a minute.”

John nods, and Max turns around to head towards Sherlock's room. But as soon as his back is turned, John quickly grabs the pistol from beneath the stack of newspapers and holds it behind his back, ready for anything. He follows the man without being too obvious, and then watches like a hawk as he knocks on Sherlock's door.

The door opens, and Sherlock stands in the doorway, still barefoot and shirtless.

"Ah," he says. " _I was expecting you_."

 

The sight of the man stops him cold.

The curtains are still drawn in the bedroom, but a bedside lamp is still on, its warm, golden glow throwing the planes and angles of the detective’s face into sharp relief.  The deep hollows at the base of his neck, delineated by his collarbones. The pale, smooth skin of that lean torso, the sparse, fine hair on his bare chest, the thin veins snaking down the taut muscles of his arms.

“Expecting _me_?” he asks before he can stop himself, meeting the other man’s gaze, a startling shade of aquamarine in this half-light. He’s aware that he’s staring now, that his breathing has gone shallow. It takes a massive effort to tear his eyes away from him, to try to recover his composure as fast as he can, and he’s certain that it wasn’t quite fast enough.

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock drawls. “You’ve come to take a look at the air-conditioning.”

 _Ah, yes. Of course that’s what he means. Stay focused, stay calm; you’ve already given something away, don’t do it again_.

"Yes, sir. Forgive the intrusion. I won’t be long."

“Just doing your job." Sherlock folds his arms over his chest and leans against one wall, legs crossed at the ankles. He’s studying Max’s movements closely but dispassionately, as though he’s a particularly interesting kind of insect.

"It's rather odd that you people can't tell where the problem lies. I imagine your cooling systems are mapped out on computers, hmm?"

Max nods. "They are indeed. But the engineer in charge of our HVAC systems is on paternity leave, and his assistant phoned in sick last night. He’s on his way back as we speak."

"Hmm." Sherlock narrows his eyes slightly as he examines the floor manager's face. "Very faint trace of a Swiss German accent. Were you born in Basel,” and he reads the name off the nameplate, “ _M. Kronenberger_?"

Max keeps his voice even, his tone polite. " _Maximillian_. Yes, sir. Although I spent several years in London at my first job."

"Ah, that explains it. More than five years, then, I take it? Long enough to almost drum the accent out of you."

"Yes, sir."

John clears his throat. "I think we'd better let Mr. Kronenberger get on with his work."

"Hmm. Yes, of course. Silly of me to keep you -- _Max_ ," he says, holding out his hand.

He's taken aback again, but this time he's faster to mask it, extending his hand to shake the offered one. Sherlock’s grasp is firm, sure, that Carrara-marble skin warm to the touch and softer than he expects.

“I apologise once more for the intrusion,” he says, releasing the hand. “We’ll have to send our people back in within the hour to take a closer look at the units. Hopefully we can pinpoint the problem soon and get the cooling up and running again in no time.”

He turns to John. “Thank you.”

“I’ll see you out,” John answers, still holding the pistol behind his back. He gives Sherlock a look and a small nod, then walks Max to the door. “Thanks.”

“A good morning to you, sir.”

John closes the door and locks it. Sherlock is standing in the living room.

“More people coming,” John says glumly. “I don’t like this.”

“Relax,” Sherlock says. “What could possibly go wrong?” He turns and walks back to his room, shutting the door.

John frowns; he’s used to Sherlock being reckless, but this seems rather too cavalier, even for him.

_But then again … he’s the one with the massive intellect; surely if he’d seen something suspicious about this whole thing, he‘d have said something._

_Right. Better check in with Anthea and the boys, just to play it safe._

They’re professionals, Jim’s crew -- fast, thorough, efficient. They’re in and out of the suites on the twelfth floor very quickly – _all_ the suites, not just Sherlock Holmes’ and those of his private security detail.  Before the end of that morning, the air-conditioning is back on, and more importantly, the tiny surveillance cameras are in place and transmitting.  There are three in Sherlock’s suite (the two bedrooms, the living room), two each in the suites of the lone businessman and the honeymoon couple who are in fact watching over Sherlock, and another two in the hallway -- one with a direct view of the lift.

For three days, he observes and records what the cameras transmit. He notes, for example, that there are always at least two people on the floor, ready to respond to any threat to Sherlock at any one time. The couple – both dark-haired, the woman very attractive but in a rather forgettable way -- occasionally leave their suite together; it’s necessary to maintain their cover. But most of the time, only one of the team leaves the floor, returning after one to four hours.

Sherlock himself is never allowed to leave the suite, and this is clearly a huge strain on him. The cameras in his suite show him pacing like a caged wildcat, flipping mindlessly through cable television channels, furiously working on his laptop, playing the violin, throwing the occasional tantrum. The blonde man – the one named Simon Greer, such an unsuitable name, so very obviously made-up – tries to pacify Sherlock as he becomes increasingly bored and increasingly agitated.

He is loath to admit it to himself, but he’s fascinated by Sherlock. Despite the grainy quality and low resolution of the footage transmitted by the surveillance cameras, he cannot fail to see the man’s intensity: that burning light in his eyes when he’s absorbed in work, those rare moments of transcendent bliss that soften his features when he plays his violin.  It would seem that that machinelike coldness is all surface; and underneath that surface is a man powerfully, insolently alive, in a way that he himself has not been in a very long time.

He realises that he envies it. Covets it.

 _What did you do?_ he asks  the figure on the computer screen, the silk dressing gown swirling softly around his calves as he sways gently in time with the music. _Why does Jim want you dead? Obviously you’ve trod on his toes, but how?_

He’s never asked these questions before; he’s never needed to. Sometimes the reasons were clear enough simply because of who the target was: a crime lord, a military dictator, an informer. A certain class of client often told him exactly why; another class never explained their reasons, and he’d never cared to know. Control, Smiley, Prideaux -- they had all taught him the same thing: the less you know about the target, the better. _Just show up_ , Prideaux would say. _That’s all that’s expected of you, and all you’re paid to do._ _A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,_ Control often told him, with a sly wink.

And Smiley -- Smiley would just look at him with the smallest of smiles, and say, _Don’t ask._

But he can’t not ask – not this time. And he knows just how dangerous that is.

 

On the evening of the third day, he gets a call from Irene.

“Our mutual friend is wondering what’s taking so long.”

A certain frostiness seeps into his voice. “You may tell our mutual _friend_ that the prep work on this job is not up to his usual standard, and that I’ve had to do much of it myself."

“And I’m sure you’ve been very thorough. Still, he thinks three days is enough time.”

“And if I say it isn’t?”

She clucks disapprovingly. “Oh, _Professore_. You honestly don’t want me to go back and tell him that, do you?” Then her tone of voice becomes less friendly, more ominous. “I imagine I would get an earful, but I’d hate to think of the consequences for you.”

He takes a deep breath.

“I’ve already got a plan. Just tell him to give me another twenty-four hours.”

“All right, then. That’s something I can take back to him.” He can hear the smile in her voice once more, and he realises just how thin the ice he’s skating on truly is. “Twenty-four hours, _Professore_. Don’t disappoint him. I can’t tell you how unpleasant he can be when he’s disappointed.”

“I think I have some idea.”

She giggles conspiratorially. “ _Buona notte, Professore_ ,” she says, before hanging up.

_No, Miss Adler, if that is indeed your name._

_There’s not a single thing good about this night._

In his dreams that night, he finds himself seated in the back of a bus from the train station in Lugano. He sees the back of Fawn’s head, sleek and black, but she never turns around; it’s possible that she doesn’t even know he’s on the bus with her.

They ride along quietly, but he feels the beginnings of tension in the pit of his stomach. When he looks out the window, he sees that a heavy mist has descended upon the city. He can’t see very much except the faint outlines of buildings. Every once in a while the mist clears enough for him to see people standing on the pavement, waiting for something – perhaps their own bus rides to other places.

When he pays closer attention, he realises that he knows some of them. Jim Prideaux with his sad, dark eyes and leather jacket. There’s Control, sitting at a wooden bench, reading a paper; he glances up at him and gives him a mischievous wink as the bus passes him by. There’s Irene, stunning in a red coat, her hair flowing loose over her shoulders.

And there’s Smiley, in his wrinkled coat and glasses, his face inscrutable as always. He tries to read the eyes – Smiley’s face rarely gives anything away, but his eyes can speak volumes -- but the mist has fogged up his glasses.

He leans back in his seat and tries to relax, but still the tension grows: a nagging, gnawing fear that he can’t explain.

The bus finally lurches to a stop, and people begin filing out. He notices that Fawn hasn’t moved; she seems to be waiting for everyone else to get off first. When he stands, she stands, and moves down the aisle toward the door. He follows her out but when he gets to the door, she is standing right outside, staring at him.

“Fawn –“ he begins, but she shakes her head.

_Stay on the bus._

“I can’t,” he protests. “I have a job to do.”

_Don’t get off._

“I don’t understand –“ he begins again, but the bus begins to move. He turns to the bus driver, whose face is obscured by a cap. “Wait," he calls out to him. "I have to get off.” But the driver doesn’t listen, and the bus begins to pick up speed. He glances back at Fawn desperately, but she shakes her head.

 _Something feels -- wrong_.

He tries to scramble off the bus, but the doors slam shut and he can’t get them open.

Outside the glass, the mist swirls around Fawn and she disappears from sight.

He wakes from a troubled sleep at the crack of dawn. He assembles his tools and his gear. When he puts his clothes on, he takes his time, making certain that nothing looks odd or out of place. He takes the greatest care with even the tiniest details, knowing that the degree of preparation will spell the difference between life and death.

When he is finally satisfied, he heads to the hotel in his rented car.

Günter is waiting at a basement entrance to get him through security. He is shown into an empty utility room on the ninth floor, where he can set up his computer. Günter stands at the door, following his every move with interest. The more time he spends with the man, the more he actively dislikes him: his unctuousness, his false, ingratiating smile.

“Are you going to just stand there and watch?” he asks, allowing a note of quiet menace to colour his voice.

“I’ll have to wait here with you, anyway.”

He swears softly under his breath.

The plan hinges on timing: they have to wait until the man who shares Sherlock’s suite leaves, and then ensure that the remaining three security personnel are unable to respond if the detective calls for help. He fires up the computer and begins monitoring the transmissions from the surveillance cameras once more.

 

The opportunity presents itself a few hours later. Sherlock’s companion doesn’t use the phone inside the suite when he calls the other members of the security detail; he contacts them on his mobile phone and alerts them that he is stepping out, and they in turn increase their vigilance. It is likely that the other three operatives have ways of monitoring the suite – perhaps with bugs or surveillance cameras of their own.

When the man leaves the room and disappears down the hall, he gets moving, and Günter makes a quick phone call.

When the call is over, he asks him, “Your people ready?” as he checks his gun one last time.

Günter does not bother to keep the self-satisfied smirk out of his voice. “Of course.”

He doesn’t bother to answer. He brushes past him and makes his way to the lifts, the other man following close behind him. The lift doors close, and he fishes out a pair of black leather gloves from the pocket of his jacket and slips them on. When the doors open again, he gives Günter a quick nod, and steps out.

He makes his way down the hall quickly, silently. He knows that there is very little time to waste between the moment he enters the suite and the moment the other members of the security team respond. Ideally, Jim’s people should arrive within seconds to neutralise them.

He pauses at the door to take a deep breath; then, he slides the key card into the slot and slips quietly into the suite, locking the door behind him.

The detective is standing in the middle of the living room, fully clothed in a dark suit, playing the violin -- Rachmaninoff’s _Vocalise_. He plays a few more bars, and then stops when he senses the other man’s presence.

“Hello, Maximillian Kronenberger.” He sets the violin down on the sofa. “But of course, that isn’t your real name, is it?”

He closes the distance between them, raises the gun and points the muzzle at Sherlock’s head.

 

In her suite, Anthea watches her computer screen and sees Sherlock talking to a man. She taps the screen. “Look at that,” she says to Blake, her fellow operative. “Isn’t that the floor manager? Kronenberger?”

Blake comes closer. “Yes, it is. What’s he doing there? Did Sherlock let him in?”

“I don’t think so.” She grabs the pistol lying on the table beside the computer.

On the screen, Max Kronenberger crosses the living room and points a gun at Sherlock.

The two rush to the door.

But it won’t open.

 

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Sherlock says, turning to face him. He flops down on one of the armchairs, crosses his legs, his gaze frank and direct.

“Am I not?”

“No.” Sherlock laces his fingers together, then rests his chin on the tips of his forefingers.

“For a man with a gun to his head, you don’t seem terribly worried.”

“For a man holding a gun, you don’t seem terribly resolute.” Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “You’re wearing a jacket that’s far too large for you – I noticed it when we first met the other day. Your accomplice is working inside the hotel, then, I take it? And he supplied you with that uniform. Hotel uniforms usually fit atrociously, anyway, but in your case, you’ve deliberately asked for this, haven’t you? Would you like me to tell you why?”

“I can hardly wait.”

“Because you were planning on wearing a safety harness underneath your clothes today. Oh, it’s rather sophisticated. Very tough, but also very thin and lightweight – not many people would notice the slight difference in your bulk, or the indentation in your thighs where the leg loops lie. You’ve also brought a considerable length of thin cable, as well as what looks to be a second harness. That one’s for me. Oh, don’t act so surprised, I can see the outline of the equipment against your clothes.” Sherlock tilts his head in the direction of the large mirror on one wall of the living room. He glances at his reflection and sees what the other man sees, a series of small bumps in between his shoulder blades.

“And those gloves you’re wearing – they’re not for shooting. They’re safety gloves of some kind: suede leather palm and thumb reinforcement, Kevlar lining – _Oh!_ Of course. They’re climbing – no, _rappelling_ gloves."

He moves closer to Sherlock, and points the muzzle directly at his forehead.

“Tell me why.”

“Why _what_ , exactly?”

“Why he wants you dead.”

Sherlock throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, my goodness. This is most amusing.” And just as suddenly, he’s leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, all cold seriousness. “You do know what they say about the effect of curiosity on cats, don’t you?”

This time, he lets the tip of the muzzle touch Sherlock’s forehead.

“Tell me.”

There’s a commotion outside, and then shots ring out. He runs to the door and peers through the keyhole, then opens the door a crack. The door to the businessman’s suite is open, and his body is sprawled on the carpet. There is a man standing over him.

He knows that face.

_Something feels – wrong._

 

John is at the concierge’s desk, checking if there are any messages or packages for them. He is waiting for the concierge when his mobile phone rings. It’s Anthea.

“John, get back here now," she says urgently. "Sherlock’s in trouble, and someone's locked us inside the room. I've tried to reach Selwyn but he's not answering his phone.”

It’s the exact same moment that he notices a sudden flurry of activity among the staff behind the desk. They are speaking urgently to each other, keeping their voices down so as not to alarm any of the guests milling around. He strains to hear them, and what little he hears makes his blood run cold.

 _… gunshots on the twelfth floor_ …

He makes a dash for the lifts.

 

He closes the door quickly before the man gets a chance to see him, locks it and slides the chain into place. He turns and grabs one end of the console table, then drags it in front of the door.

“I see we have company,” Sherlock says, rising to his feet.

“Don’t move,” he says coldly, pointing the gun at the detective once more.

“Oh, stop.” Sherlock's tone is both impatient and dismissive. “If you were serious about killing me, you would have shot me in the back of the head as soon as you came through the door. It would have been clean and efficient, and you would have calmly walked out of the door afterwards.  You wouldn’t have planned to leave via the balcony, wouldn’t have needed to wear a harness or bring steel cable or use rappelling gloves to make your escape. You knew before you came here today that you were not only NOT going to kill me, but that you would escape with me. You had a sense that someone would come along to finish the job you were hired to do, in case you weren’t able to do it. You don’t trust the man who hired you – not this time. How am I doing?”

“Fuck you.”

Those pale, grey-blue-green eyes flash with an angry fire, and then narrow, watching him with interest once more.

“You are a very strange man, Max Kronenberger.”

More shots, and now the muted wail of a police siren approaching, still some distance away.

He runs toward the sliding doors leading to the balcony, opens them and looks out onto the street. No police cars yet, but it won’t be long before they get here.

“Er, Max,” Sherlock calls out to him, “I think we’ve got a visitor.”

He dashes back inside the suite, and sees that the doorknob is being turned viciously by someone on the outside.

“Come here,” he orders Sherlock. “Come away from the door.”

Sherlock does as he is told, but it’s only a matter of seconds before shots are fired into the door, near the lock.

There’s no time to waste; the man outside the door is one of the most dangerous, ruthless killers he has ever known, and if he gets through that door –

“Come with me. Now.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, and instead drags the other man to the balcony with him. He lays his gun down on one of the balcony’s plinths, removes his jacket, then rips up the lining. He draws out the other harness, this one more rudimentary -- little more than a few straps of leather and tough nylon. "Put this on over your clothes," he says, handing it to Sherlock and leaving him to figure out how to wear it.

He rips his shirt off, takes the coil of cable taped to his back, and partly unspools it, then rigs it to his own harness. The cable is hooked to two large steel carabiners; he attaches these, in turn, to the balcony’s cast iron balustrades, and makes certain they’re fixed securely.

Then he holds a gloved hand out to Sherlock.

Sherlock glances at the offered hand, then over the balustrade at the ground below. “Or, you could just shoot him.”

As if on cue, a bullet shatters the glass of one of the sliding doors.

“If only things were that simple. _Come_.” It’s not a request but a command.

Sherlock allows him to pull him up close and check the harness he has just put on. When he's satisfied that he's worn it correctly, he clips its straps on to his own harness. They're uncomfortably close now, with virtually no space between them. Sherlock does the most sensible thing in this case: he hooks his arms over and around the other man’s neck and shoulders.

Max retrieves the gun, then grips the cable with both hands. “Hold tight,” he instructs. “I don’t know how secure this balustrade is.”

“I find that deeply comforting.”

A glance over Sherlock’s shoulder tells him that the console table has already been pushed out of place; the hand holding the gun is about to fire again. He fires two rounds and the man outside the door withdraws – but only for a moment or two.

It has to happen _now_.

They leap off the balcony.

The cable unwinds and he uses the momentum gained from the leap to swing the both of them toward the windows of a room on the eighth floor. He hasn’t done this in years, so he’s a bit rusty; he manages to just about shield Sherlock from crashing into a wall on one side of the windows, absorbing most of the impact with his own body. He fights to stop himself from screaming in pain, pushing off the wall furiously to steer their entwined bodies correctly.  

As they swing out away from the side of the building again, he glances up and sees that familiar face, looking at them over the balustrade. He has to get this next swing right or they’ll both die – they won’t have a third chance. The man on the balcony will either shoot at them again, or unhook the carabiners, if he hasn’t started doing so already.

The swing back towards the windows seems to take forever.

They crash through the glass, tumbling across the living room floor.

The room’s occupants are obviously out.

He and Sherlock are scratched by tiny shards of glass, but there’s no time just now to examine their injuries. He bends down and takes a steel cutter from a leather sheath strapped to the inside of his right ankle, and cuts the fine but heavy cable. It slithers across the floor and falls to the ground below. He uses the cutter to slice through the straps on Sherlock's harness, then pulls down his trousers to cut the leg loops on his own harness.  When he's done, he discards both the shredded harness and the cutter, and pulls his trousers back up.

“You all right?” he asks Sherlock. When he doesn’t respond, he asks again, louder this time. “ _Are you all right_?” He drags the man forward into the light, patting him down to check if he has any serious injuries.

“Yes,” Sherlock answers quietly. “Yes, I’m all right,” he repeats, more emphatically this time.

He releases Sherlock then, reasonably satisfied that he has no injuries more serious than a few scratches on his face and hands. The detective looks around the room, at the broken glass on the carpet, at the objects knocked to the floor when they crashed through the windows. He brushes shards of glass from his clothes, then stares at the other man: the cuts on his face, arms, and hands, the expanse of bare skin from the waist up. A few beats, and then he looks away. “Well, then. What now?”

Max makes his way to the bedroom, and flings open the closet doors. There are a few shirts hanging inside, and he snatches one off the hanger: a long-sleeved button-down in midnight blue oxford, the better to hide any bleeding from the cuts. He puts it on, but it’s several sizes too large, so he folds up the sleeves and tucks the hem of the shirt into his trousers.

“We’ve got to get out of here now.” He drags Sherlock to the door, opens it a crack and checks the hallway. It’s empty. They step out, but he keeps a firm hold on Sherlock, the muzzle of his gun pressed to his back. “Not the lifts. Stairs.”

 

When the lift doors open, John is immediately confronted with a clutch of hysterical hotel guests trying to flee the scene of the shooting. He struggles to get past them as they crowd into the lift, then runs toward the suite.

He stops for a moment at Selwyn’s open door. It takes only a few seconds to determine that there’s nothing he can do for him now.  

When he glances up, two men come rushing out of Sherlock’s suite. When they see him, they quickly take aim and fire, but John quickly ducks into Selwyn’s suite and slams the door. He hears their footsteps coming toward him, but suddenly a man’s voice begins barking orders in German, and the footsteps move away.

He steps out again, pistol ready, and sees the two men running down the hall in the opposite direction, toward the emergency exit.

A man is standing in the doorway of Sherlock’s suite. He looks up at John – and smiles: a smile so full of malevolent glee that John won’t soon forget it. Then he raises his gun, aims at him and fires. John responds a split-second later by firing a volley of his own.

They both miss each other by a hair’s breadth.

 

He pushes the exit door open and checks up and down the stairwell. Then he drags Sherlock forward and they descend as quickly as their legs can carry them. It’s not long before they hear a tumult in the levels above them. “Keep moving,” he tells Sherlock with a slight push.

A moment later, they hear an exit door about two floors above them crash open, and they hear footsteps rapidly approaching. “Run,” he commands, but Sherlock is already flying down the stairs, two steps at a time.

 _Günter_ , he thinks, _the little snake_. _I must remind myself to break his neck the first chance I get_.  A bullet glances off the metal handrail, narrowly missing both of them. He pushes Sherlock close to the wall and shields him with his body as they continue to make their way down. At the level of the parking garage, he opens the exit door a crack, and checks to see if anyone is waiting for them outside. Satisfied that it’s clear, he throws it open and pulls Sherlock along.

They run to where he has parked his car, but he stops a few spaces away. _No. Too easy_ , he thinks. “Come this way.” He drags Sherlock toward the nearest exit.

Someone starts firing at them again. They duck behind a car, but keep moving, listening out for approaching footsteps. Another two shots are fired, and he pulls Sherlock toward the relative safety of a large van.

“I take it you didn’t think this far ahead,” Sherlock says mockingly.

He doesn’t bother to reply. Instead, he glances at his wristwatch, then stares straight ahead. _Hurry up_ , he says to himself. _Just hurry the fuck up._

And then there it is, like clockwork: the lorry that comes by at this time to collect the soiled hotel linens. He’d made a mental note of it the last time he was here. The driver parks near a collection bay, and steps out to speak with a member of the hotel staff who is waiting for him, leaving the door open with the keys still in the ignition.

He glances around the back of the van to check if their pursuers are heading in this direction. “Come on,” he says, and he pushes Sherlock forward. They run for the lorry’s cab and scramble into it, just as the driver and the hotel employee notice and start yelling at them. But they’re soon pushed back by another volley of gunfire.

“More company,” Sherlock announces.

“I noticed.” He quickly manoeuvres the lorry away from the collection bay, backs up and heads for the exit. “Keep your head down,” he orders, and before Sherlock can either obey or protest, he shoves the man’s head to a level lower than the cab’s dashboard. A bullet goes through the windshield but he keeps driving, picking up speed as he goes. He heads straight for the two men pursuing them; when they realise what he intends to do, they jump away from the path of the lorry. They continue to fire, but they’ve been caught off-balance, and the lorry is moving too fast.

The vehicle shoots out of the exit, up the ramp and onto the street. As he approaches the junction, he looks up and down the street perpendicular to theirs. Police cars are now racing toward the hotel’s front entrance. When the light turns green, he keeps a steady pace until they’re well away from the hotel, and then he accelerates.

Sherlock sits up at last, straightens out his jacket. He glances at the side mirror, sees that nobody is following – not yet.

“Rather conspicuous, this lorry,” he observes calmly, as though they hadn’t just jumped off a twelfth-floor balcony, crashed into a room below, run down several flights of stairs and escaped narrowly from their pursuers. “But I have to say that I’m impressed by your ability to improvise.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Oh, for God’s sake, since you’ve gone to the trouble to kidnap me, you might as well talk to me,” Sherlock says, suddenly seething. “I imagine you’ve a long journey planned for us, so the least you can do is be _entertaining_.”

He glances at the man beside him, then turns away again, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.

“At the very least, you could tell me where you intend to take me.”

 _Think_ , he snarls at himself. _Irene knows where you live, so you can't go back there. No hotels or inns -- they'll be watching everything. The slightest twitch and you're both dead. And if Jim sent Sebastian Moran ... that means he doesn't trust you. Probably never has, and certainly has no reason to do so now._

There's only one place to go, and damned if he doesn't wish that he had any other options.

But he doesn't. So.

It’s Lugano, then. Back to Fawn, and her workshop.

And her weapons.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is kind of an AU of the AU I wrote in "The Fraternity". There's no Cold War, and the time is set firmly in the present day. The characters will be taken outside their roles in their respective worlds/canons, but it's my hope that they'll continue to be fundamentally the same characters we all love. 
> 
> The basic premise for this story came from Martin Booth's "A Very Private Gentleman", which was later adapted for the screen in the George Clooney film "The American". But from there, it diverges quite a bit.


End file.
